


Cursed Words

by veinsofink



Series: Ay, Mi Amor: Imector One Shots and AUs [3]
Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, One Shot, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 11:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21074339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veinsofink/pseuds/veinsofink
Summary: The story behind the music ban. All it takes is one accident, just one time overhearing a certain song on the radio, and the Rivera family is changed forever. (Reposted)





	Cursed Words

**Author's Note:**

> Oof. This one was angsty. Sorry.

The letters stopped coming after six months. For a short time, Imelda had thought, _This is it. They got their dream_. She had allowed herself to hope, to sweep her debilitating fear under the rug long enough to think that everything would soon be all right, that he had stopped writing because he was suddenly busy with contracts and legal talk. Her husband would soon come home; she would kiss him or hit him, depending on how she felt the moment she saw his stupid face; he would wait for word from a publicist or an investor or whoever ran the musical industry and then–

And then what?

Once he got a taste of the world outside Santa Cecilia, would he pack up his things and leave for good this time? Go off on tours not lasting months, but years? Get farther and farther away from his family as his fame spread, always just out of reach? Decide that he didn’t need them anymore, that they anchored him down to a life and a town too small for his dreams?

She disposed of that glimmering hope rather quickly. In her opinion, it was better to be prepared for the worst than to ultimately let herself down.

Coco’s optimism never faded. As another day, another week passed without word from her papá, she would only frown and say, “He’s just busy. He’ll write next week, won’t he, Mamá?”

As the weeks turned to months, Imelda’s answers changed from “I’m sure he will, _mija_,” to “I don’t think so, Coco.” She would do anything to give her daughter any kind of hope that her papá hadn’t forgotten about them and that he would soon return, but she couldn’t keep lying to her either. 

When Coco’s birthday came around, it had been four months since the last letter, and the newly turned four-year-old sat at the window all day, watching for a sign of a tall, skinny man coming through the gate. Imelda– after several attempts to get Coco to go play, to dance, to go torment her tíos or do _something_ other than waste away waiting for a man who would never come home– let her be until dinnertime. She’d made all of the little girl’s favorite foods, had even spent some extra money on sweets to coax a smile from the little girl who had been frowning far too much lately. 

It worked, somewhat. Oscar and Felipe managed to get her to giggle, arguing clownishly over whose hats were whose, whose mustache was better looking, who was born first, who their mamá favored more. They kept her busy throughout dinner, asking her all kinds of questions about what she would do now that she was a whole year older. She even clapped her hands and squealed when Imelda showed her the different _panes dulces_ she’d picked out for the occasion. 

But Imelda still knew it wasn’t enough. Coco’s tíos weren’t as silly as her papá. Their stories weren’t as fantastic and mesmerizing as his, and _panes dulces_ weren’t as good when he wasn’t pretending to barter with her over the treat they both wanted, but which she would ultimately win.

That night, after Imelda had tucked the girl into bed and kissed her goodnight, she lingered outside the door, thinking of a man she would rather forget if he didn’t even have the decency to write to his daughter for her birthday. 

She stood outside the door so long, Coco must have thought that her mother had long since retired for the night, because from behind the door drifted a sweet voice, singing softly into the darkness. 

_“Recuérdame hoy me tengo que ir mi amor,_

_ Recuérdame…_

_ No llores, por favor…”_

The little girl’s voice broke over the words, desperately trying to obey her papá’s request. Imelda’s throat tightened and her own tears welled in her eyes.

There was a time, early in their marriage, when she thought that her husband couldn’t love her any more than he already did. Then Coco was born, and in a matter of seconds she watched his world collapse and rebuild itself around that tiny, squalling baby nestled in his arms. That love he had for her was suddenly magnified in a way she hadn’t thought possible. She thought it indestructible.

She was wrong. And now her daughter was crying through a lullaby written just for her, clinging to the hope that her papá still loved her. 

All that pain, all those tears, and for what? A stupid musical fantasy? For _fame_?

She could handle being left behind. She was no stranger to abandonment, and she would only make herself stronger because of it. But Coco didn’t deserve that. If music meant more to Héc– to _that man_– than his daughter, then she wanted no part of it. 

The next day, Imelda banished music from her life. Oscar and Felipe looked horrified when she told them, and she was quick to explain that she was only asking them to refrain from singing or listening to the radio around her. She wouldn’t force them to stop completely because of her own heartbreak. 

She wouldn’t– _couldn’t_– make Coco stop singing either. She wouldn’t make her stop singing her lullaby, not when it was the last shred of hope she had to hold onto. Maybe it made her a bad mother to give Coco false expectations, but it was the one bit of music she couldn’t completely rip out of her life. So instead, she resolved not to linger outside Coco’s door anymore.

In the two years since that night, Imelda had thrown herself into her work. The shoe shop was fully up and running, and she and the twins ran it like a well-oiled machine. She would begin teaching Coco the basics this year, simple things like selecting the right lasts and threading shoelaces, though the six-year-old would probably rather be dancing around the shop and making up fairytales to occupy them while they worked.

It would be good for Coco to learn the business early and to take on some responsibility, however small. Imelda was trying to build something that would last for generations, something sturdy and _reliable_, and Coco would be the one to carry it on. 

She was walking home from making a delivery to Señor Gonzales’s ranch hands, detouring through the plaza to stop at the produce stand. She didn’t like going to the plaza, not when _he _seemed to linger there, even to this day. But it was impossible not to see him there, sitting on the pavilion steps, strumming that guitar of his alongside that friend of his and playing songs for pocket change, not when she had seen him there every day for months before they began courting and–

_Enough._ She shook herself and came back to the present. A different mariachi had taken his place, a solo act instead of the duo that had drawn crowds nearly every day. The mariachi was in between songs, taking a rest in the shade. If Imelda hurried, she could be out of the plaza before he even finished warming up. 

It was nearly impossible to avoid music completely, not when México practically breathed music from every nook and cranny. She did her best, but there were just some things– like mariachis in the plaza, nearby parties, and especially hymns during Mass– that she just couldn’t escape. Even as hard as she tried to think of nothing but shoe orders and keeping the twins in check, sometimes the gentle croon of a violin or a child’s nursery rhyme made its way to her ears.

And that was how she found herself catching the tail end of a song– one she had forbidden herself from hearing, the one her daughter still sang herself to sleep with every night, and one that was now playing on a small radio at a table outside the cantina. She saw several people crowded around it, listening as though it held the secrets to life itself. She began to hurry past the crowd, knowing it was no concern of hers, but the smallest snatch of the song reached her ears, and her blood went cold. She froze in the middle of the cobbled road.

“…_Si mi guitarra oyes llorar_

_ Ella con su triste canto te acompañará_

_ Hasta que en mis brazos estés,_

_ Recuérdame!”_

It wasn’t _his_ voice, but she knew the voice well enough anyway. It belonged to that friend of his– _Ernesto_, her girlhood friends had dreamily sighed, though she always thought he looked more ape-like than man. The song was faster than it should be, flirty and impersonal. It bordered on risqué. A chorus of back-up singers accompanied the rich, overdramatic voice holding out the last note for a ridiculous length of time.

The group of listeners burst into excited conversation and applause that a tinned voice couldn’t possibly hear. Imelda stayed anchored to the ground, her stomach twisting in knots and an ache in her heart that she hadn’t felt so strongly since her husband left home.

It was vile. It felt indecent to be there, listening to an altered, bombastic mockery of her child’s lullaby. It was hardly recognizable as the same song, the new tempo and beat of the words twisting it into something perverse and unwelcome. 

She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to track down Ernesto de la Cruz himself and demand answers.

But she only stood, trembling in the middle of the road while oblivious fans gushed over Santa Cecilia’s own son– a famous one, at that, though there was no mention of the other one.

A realization choked her, and it spurred Imelda into motion. She didn’t quite register the rest of the way home, though she vaguely thought she might be running. She didn’t hear the compound gate slam against the wall and ricochet back into place, nor see her basket fall off the kitchen counter as she raced through the house.

In her next moment of clarity, she was in their– _her_– bedroom, looking around at the sparse furnishings and choking back the lump in her throat. 

She paced. She screamed into her pillow while tears darkened the fabric. She paced some more and shoved fingers through her hair until it fell messily from its coil. She wanted to throw something, break something, but there was nothing to damage that she wouldn’t regret later. 

When her heartbeat slowed to a normal rate, Imelda sat on the edge of the bed and breathed deeply, trying to ward off the last vestiges of a sob. 

Something horrible had happened.

If he were dead, Ernesto would have said something. She’d never much cared for him, but he and _that man_ were the closest of friends, brothers even. He was as much family as Oscar and Felipe. He would have written to her, if not come back to Santa Cecilia just to deliver the tragic news. She would know if her husband was dead.

But in two and a half years, there hadn’t been a single word out of Ernesto, not unless that day’s radio revelation counted. 

So he wasn’t dead. 

He had simply left and never came home. 

A new stream of tears spilled out, and she hugged her shaking arms to her chest. Had she mattered so little in the grand scheme of things? Had all of his flowery words and promises, the songs he wrote and dedicated to her– had they all been a lie? And what about Coco, had she–

Coco. 

Imelda’s sobs ceased, and though her face was still wet, fury took root where before there was only devastation.

He had sold “Recuérdame_”. _Perhaps he’d even given it away without a second thought to the child waiting for him at home– the little girl he’d asked to remember him though he could clearly forget her.

If she heard that abomination on the radio, it would break her heart. She wouldn’t show it– an older girl in town told her that big girls didn’t cry, and she took it to heart– but Imelda knew; she would wait until she was alone in her room, and instead of singing her song, she would cry herself to sleep with the knowledge that her secret song wasn’t so secret anymore, that her papá had given it away and it was making its way into the hearts of every person in México. She had spent so much of her short life waiting for him to come home, Imelda feared that this news would make her lose part of herself.

No. This home had seen too much heartbreak. If there was just one thing she could do to lessen it, then she would do whatever it took.

She made a decision. Coco couldn’t hear that song. She _would not_ ever hear that song.

Imelda stood on uneasy limbs and went back into the main area of the house. As she passed the mantle, she looked up and saw the framed picture of her little family. She had worn her nicest dress, had gone to great pains to keep Coco clean and presentable that day in her new pink dress. Her husband had worn a borrowed charro suit that was just slightly too big for him, not quite filling it out in the shoulders, but he’d still looked as handsome as she had ever seen him. The photographer had told them that the photo took several seconds to capture, and that the slightest movement could cause the photo to come out blurry. It was best not to attempt smiling. Imelda’s expression came out stern, and Coco, not even three years old yet, simply looked perplexed. But _he _had still managed to smile softly, a slight upturn of his lips that he held perfectly still until the photographer declared it finished. 

It had once been perfectly fitting to their family. She didn’t realize it was in her hands until it slipped from her fingers, the frame shattering on the floor. Trembling, Imelda knelt to pick up the glass. Some shards cut her fingers, the new wounds smarting but not bleeding yet. She delicately took the picture in her hands, looking hard at his likeness.

He wanted to go play for the world? Fine. He could have the world.

In seconds, she had ripped the right corner off the photo, leaving herself and her daughter sitting next to the headless torso of the man who abandoned them. 

She swept the glass up and put the ruined photo aside to deal with later, brushing her skirt off as she strode for the workshop. 

The door hinges creaked loudly as she walked in, alerting her remaining family of her presence before they even saw her. Coco hastily sat herself down on a stool, trying to look for all the world like she hadn’t been dancing. Oscar and Felipe looked up from the shoes they were polishing, grins on their faces. But before they could say anything, they faltered.

“Imelda?” Felipe said.

“What’s wrong, _hermana_?” said Oscar.

Coco looked up then, a cute furrow forming between her brows. Imelda remembered, then, how disheveled she must look. Her eyes felt swollen and stung in the air, and her hair fell in a rat’s nest around her shoulders. 

It took several moments for her to remember to speak, and when she did, it was raspy and weak, even to her own ears. “No more music,” she whispered. 

“What?!” Coco cried, dismayed. She leapt from her stool and met her mamá halfway, coming to stop toe-to-toe against her mother’s boots. “Why?”

She took a steadying breath. “Music has done nothing but hurt us, _mija_. It has no place in this house anymore.” 

Coco shook her head, her twin braids flying. “But– but Mamá, my song! Papá–”

“–isn’t coming home, Coco.” The words came out harsher than intended. Coco flinched, and Imelda squeezed her eyes shut, reining in the overwhelming misery that begged to be unleashed. She looked at her daughter again and cupped the girl’s face in her hands. Gently this time, she asked, “_Mija, _do you trust Mamá to do what’s best for you? Even if you don’t understand right now?”

Tears were welling in the little girl’s eyes, and she was fighting valiantly against them. For a moment, Imelda wondered if she would fight back, demand an explanation better than the one she was given. Maybe teenage rebellion would start several years too early.

But eventually, slowly, Coco nodded. Imelda sighed and drew her in, cupping the back of her head. Coco sniffled and buried her face into her mother’s stomach, the fabric dampening there. Over Coco’s head, she saw Oscar and Felipe exchange a look, and then turn back to her. Whatever they saw on her face, it seemed to answer an unspoken question. Their expressions hardened, and she knew they understood. A festering wound had been prodded until it bled anew, and this time, there was no healing it. It could only be treated, ignored, but never healed.

And after that night, she never shed another tear for the man who had walked out of their home and out of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> For the record, I don't have anything else of this series written. Maybe one day I'll add to it, but until then, consider this series completed! Feel free to give prompt suggestions, but I'm also working on three other projects right now so I might not get around to it for quite a while, unless the inspiration hits ;)


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